Business Health Dashboard

The 88 Miles Business Health Dashboard gives you a quick overview of the state of your business. It does this by looking at how many hours you clock, what your hourly rate is, as well as how much money you want to make.

The health dashboard can be found by in the menu, or by clicking the gauge icon in the top corner of the project page.

Setting your goals

For the system to work, it needs a little bit more information about your business.

Annual Revenue Goal

The Annual Revenue Goal is the amount of money before expenses that you want to make from freelancing per year.
Because 88 Miles doesn't know about revenue you have out side of per-hour freelancing or consulting, don't include outside income (from, say selling products) in this number.

Target hours per day

As much as we would like to think ourselves as super human, the reality is that you aren't going to be able to bill 100% of your work day. In fact, it's much less. You have to
put up with client phone calls, meetings, doing your accounts and other not-fun stuff that is part and parcel of running a business. You also need to eat, go to the bathroom and
occasionally get up and go for a walk.

4 hours a day is a nice round number that will be a good starting point — 88 Miles will eventually tell you whether this is too high or too low.

Work days per year.

The answer to this question is not 365. You need to take time off. You shouldn't be working 7-days a week, otherwise you'll burn out before you know it.

Admittedly, freelancers will work slightly longer hours than the average desk-jockey, but let's still aim somewhere in 230-250 days a year. That will give you roughly weekends off, all public/bank holidays off, and a week or so of holidays or sick days. Pretty generous, huh?

Hourly Rate

If you have filled out the three fields about, there should be a suggested hourly rate. Is it higher or lower than what you are charging now? If the auto calculated number is higher, you might need to think about raising your rates. If it's lower, then you get more holidays!

Click update to use the auto calculated amount, otherwise enter you actual hourly rate. You you have different hourly rates for different clients, enter the amount you would give a new client.

Currency

Pretty self-explanatory. 88 Miles will have tried to guess this, so it will most likely be pre-set to your local currency. If you move about, or charge a different currency for your work, you can set it here.

Days that you work

Check the days that you generally work. For most full time freelancers, this will be Monday to Friday. If you are a moonlighting freelancer, you might work weekends.

Now that you have filled in the extra details that 88 Miles requires, click Update and you should see a screen similar to the one below.

The Graph

The first piece of at-a-glance information is the revenue target graph. The grey line represents the target you need to hit every month so you can achieve your annual goal. The green line
show’s your actual revenue. If they year is not yet complete, the graph is extended to make a guess of your final income.

You want the green line to be above the grey line.

Revenue this month

This covers the revenue you have made since the first day of the current month. The trend arrow tells you if your billables are increasing, stable or decreasing during this month.

Billable hours this month

This is a breakdown of the number of billable and none billable hours you have done this month. You will see a green, grey or red arrow next to this number, which indicates whether the number of billable hours you do each month is growing, staying the same or is falling.

A falling monthly billable amount is not a problem, unless the green line on the revenue graph is below the grey line. That means you are below your target, so you need to do more hours, not less.

Billable hours per day

Compares the average number of hours you are doing per day against your target.

If your billable hours are down, this will need to be higher than your target, so you can get back on track.

Revenue this period

This is the revenue you have made between the selected date range. You will also see your target, and the predicted amount along side a percentage difference between the target and predicted. The trend arrow tells you if your revenue has increased, decreased of stayed the same over the selected time period.

If the percentage is green, you will make more than your target. If it's red, your won't make your target. If it's grey, you should hit your target.

Average billables per month

Gives you an indicator of the number of billable hours you have done between the selected date range. Again, we have a trending arrow — green means it's increasing, grey means it's the same, red means it's decreasing.

Average billable hours per day

Finally, the average billable hours per day will tell you if you are working too hard, too little, or just right.